Pairing a veteran police officer with a former inmate to crack down on crime seems the stuff of Hollywood — in fact, it was a winning formula when Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte teamed up in 48 Hours. President Donald Trump is hoping to replicate that success as he attempts to turn around a federal prison system in crisis. The gamble may pay off.

With tight budgets, aging facilities, and a personnel crisis, the Bureau of Prisons is widely considered a management disaster. There have been seven directors over the past eight years, fitting for a federal prison system that has become a revolving door for inmates. Trump has taken a novel approach to correct the failures of the past, tapping William Marshall and his deputy Josh Smith to fulfill his campaign pledge to “make America safe again.”

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In Marshall and Smith, he picked an improbable duo. The new director, Marshall, was a state trooper before leading West Virginia’s Department of Corrections. Appointed as his deputy, Smith was a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist who served time in federal prison himself — Trump pardoned him in 2021.

Both know keeping prisons secure is priority No. 1.  But they also understand that fulfilling the BOP’s mission to rehabilitate offenders is also critical, because 97% of all inmates will return home eventually. Failure means that too many will leave prison and commit more crimes. Each time someone reoffends, it’s another court case, another prison cell, and another victim. That’s why the BOP’s rehabilitation mission is critical to making communities safer.

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The former police officer and former criminal have begun to turn the BOP around by focusing on three priorities: addressing operational problems with facilities and staff, implementing the First Step Act, and strengthening ties between inmates and families. Each one targets both security and rehabilitation.

Operational challenges are the most pressing as the agency faces a $3 billion maintenance backlog and a staffing crisis. When facilities and personnel are allowed to degrade, bad things happen, from prisoner suicides to assaults on staff and crime within prison walls. Old prisons also require more manpower to operate. And the BOP is already perilously understaffed. A shortage of 4,000 corrections officers puts wardens in a no-win situation. Cutting prisoner exercise time and visiting hours leads to inmate violence. Requiring mandatory overtime burns out the staff. In either case, federal prisons become more dangerous and less effective at rehabilitation.

Unfortunately, more than 40% of all inmates who leave the BOP’s prisons end up rearrested — twice the recidivism rates of the nation’s best-run states. Reducing reoffending cuts crime. And that is precisely what Marshall and Smith have set out to do. They are meeting with corrections officers across the country to understand and respond to the challenges they face, in hopes of slowing the staff exodus. The agency is recruiting new talent with a creative social media campaign. And resources from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act are now available to fill the vacancies and repair facilities.

On the prisoner side, BOP leadership has committed to fully implementing Trump’s signature legislation, the First Step Act. All but ignored during the Biden administration, Trump’s 2018 law offers low-risk offenders an earlier pathway to home confinement if they complete antirecidivism programming. With more inmates safely finishing their sentences outside the walls, First Step Act implementation will improve the staff-to-inmate ratio, leading to increased safety in prisons and relieving pressure from the shortage of corrections officers.

Equally important, the First Step Act increases the odds that inmates will become law-abiding citizens after incarceration. According to a 2024 Council on Criminal Justice study, prisoners released under Trump’s First Step Act had a 55% lower reoffense rate. That translated to 4,837 fewer arrests for an already overtaxed justice system.

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Lastly, the BOP’s new leadership recognizes the value of keeping inmates connected to their families.  Maintaining family relationships benefits inmate mental health, cuts depression, and improves prisoner behavior, leading to safer facilities. Moreover, multiple studies show that if prisoners maintain family ties during incarceration, they are at a lower risk of reoffending when they leave. This is why the BOP recently increased the amount of time inmates can call home each month. The agency is also looking at using technology to bolster those ties and pressing wardens to make family visits easier.

Any effort to make America safe again starts and ends with a well-run BOP. Marshall and Smith are bringing different perspectives when it comes to operating inside a prison, but they have thus far been united in using proven strategies to cut recidivism while increasing security. If they are successful, they will provide a model for criminal justice reforms at the state and local level — not to mention fodder for another Hollywood film.

David Safavian is the chief operating officer of Unify.US and a criminal justice policy adviser at the Conservative Political Action Coalition.

Patrick Purtill is a former Justice Department official and the executive vice president and general counsel at Unify.US.